We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
"A Woman of Paris" 171
was a courageous experiment which, however, Chaplin never repeated. It seemed to be too adult for the general film audience which, according even to present surveys, is concentrated in the adolescent-age range. It went over only in the biggest cities. However, it was very popular — almost a cult — with the intelligentsia, and the twenties saw frequent revivals of the film.
The story itself, a variation of the old triangle, was not unusual; but the imaginative and brilliant handling, the significance carried by its details, its indirect and subtle style, its laconic touches, won it the admiration of sensitive audiences. It reflected Chaplin's deep insight into human nature and especially his understanding of feminine psychology. It is probably the first film which consciously attempted to express complexity in human character and in human relations. To present the human mixture of good and bad in a film's principal characters was, in itself, quite unprecedented, on a screen whose "heroes" and "heroines" were usually elemental symbols painted either white or black.
"A Woman of Paris" is subtitled "a drama of fate" and fate's hand moves throughout the film. We see it in the death of the father as Jean sets out to elope with Marie; in the interrupted telephone call at the station; in their accidental meeting years later in Paris; in the failure to see each other as Pierre and Marie pass each other at the end of the film. This ending has a symbolical significance besides being a human irony. Pierre is in a speeding automobile; Marie rides on the tail of a hay cart. The separation of their paths is social and moral as well as geographical. (There was an alternative ending for Europe in which Marie, after Jean's suicide, is forced to return to Pierre.)
The foreword to the film, which may be taken as a Chaplin credo, runs as follows: "Humanity is composed